Was it the dealer who could go and see and upload his inventory, or was it Capital One that had access to all the dealers' inventories to cater to the car buyer?

For instance, Capital One is a credit card company. The credit card business is at the forefront of pre-qualification. I think everyone is familiar with receiving direct mail saying, "You're pre-qualified, apply for this and get this credit card that you're entitled to." Many people at Capital One come from the credit card business. So, they thought, can we do the same thing for auto? It sounds simple, but the challenge lies in the technology. Unlike credit cards, which are non-collateral and only about the person, the auto business involves both the person and the vehicle. Each vehicle is different, depending on factors like the down payment, the age of the vehicle, the type of vehicle, and so on.

Who were the dealers you were catering to? Were they more independent dealers or franchise dealers?

You soon find out that independent dealers actually tend to perform worse [than franchise dealers]. Except for one, which is CarMax. CarMax is a different type of independent dealer, but franchise dealers normally do better.

I don't know if you're aware, but dealers have what are called DMS, Dealer Management Systems. Why did you decide to build your portal from scratch instead of integrating with the different DMS?

The reason is that DMS systems are inadequate. They can't do what we're doing. They aren't flexible enough to handle different types of payments or actual pricing policies. They require multiple calls to different people for one deal at a time. They can't manage the whole inventory. We expose the full Capital One pricing and policy, allowing you to price every single vehicle. DMS can only handle one vehicle at a time. I don't think they've made any major updates recently.